Lifestyle RX: A new prescription for health

Good habits take mindfulness, but can make all the difference in your wellness.

By Observer Staff
| 9:00 a.m. April 14, 2016

Sarasota
Opinion

Yoga for Youngsters

Every Thursday afternoon, magic happens in the Wild Ginger Apothecary storefront on Superior Avenue in Gulf Gate. The participants enter the studio, grab a yoga mat and take their place in a circle on the wood floor. They sit in a cross-legged yoga pose and wait for their teacher to get the class started. The only difference between this class and probably a dozen others going on around town at the same time is that these students are all well under 5 feet tall. In fact, most of them haven’t reached the age of 10. Shocked? I was until I learned that nearly 2 million kids ages 4-17 are now practicing yoga, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Getting Your Om On

“Yoga is for everyone, and kids, especially, can benefit on so many levels,” says instructor Jen Maecker. “I have two kids myself and have seen the positive impacts of mindfulness, deep breathing and building strength and flexibility through the yoga postures.”

What I see as I wander around the studio is a situation that could easily be chaotic is remarkably well ordered and focused. Maecker uses a variety of techniques to engage the kids and ease them into postures. She taps into their imaginations and they become little lions, or snakes (the cobra) or very strong mountains.

“The way I approach teaching yoga to kids is through fun and interactive games, stories and songs as well as many, many props,” reports Maecker as we debrief following the class. “I always read the class as we get settled in and plan according to the children’s energy level and focus. Sometimes they need a quiet time to settle in to class. Other times, we need to get moving right away. I have to be ready to throw out my lesson plan and improvise if needed.”

Maecker goes on to say that yoga can also help children in focus, concentration and self- regulation. Kids yoga classes can build confidence and self-esteem and support emotional intelligence. Maecker doesn’t say this, but I can’t help but extend that into better academic performance.

That said, experts say it’s off base to assign a competitive motivation to kids yoga. Susan Verde, author of “I Am Yoga,” a kids book on the practice, stresses that yoga is not about striving for perfection. While the practice is exercise that improves energy, flexibility and balance, yoga may be the “sport” for children who don’t respond to the stress of competitive athletics.

Here are a couple of other benefits worth considering:

Yoga is a practice kids can use for an entire lifetime.
Yoga is a practice kids can do with a parent or grandparent. It’s a great way to bond.
Yoga encourages deep breathing and foundational meditation, two stress-busting exercises that are core principles for Lifestyle RX.

About the author

Kristine Nickel is a marketing communications consultant and former marketing/PR exec. For over 30 years she has relieved her stress by writing features for publications across the country.

With overwhelming research demonstrating that 80% of chronic disease is preventable through lifestyle changes, a broad-based collaborative effort to change the practice of medicine is taking place. It’s called lifestyle medicine, and it’s transforming the way that many health care providers practice medicine.

Eighty percent. That’s an astonishing number, and it begs the question: Are you practicing a healthy lifestyle, exercising regularly, eating healthfully and managing your stress at a level that could eliminate your own risk factors for chronic disease?

I know I don’t even come close. What I do know is that figure — 80% — caused me to alter my thinking about my health care. No more blaming Grandma Tilly for those bad back genes, or Great Uncle Harry for the possibility of diabetes. All of a sudden, I experienced a sense of responsibility for myself that I never quite had before. And that’s what’s behind this new monthly column, “Lifestyle RX.”

Your own prescription for health care

Each month, we’ll bring you stories about how your neighbors and others in our little patch of the Gulf Coast are taking responsibility for their health care. We’ll learn about their own lifestyle RX. How they modified their behaviors — turning physical inactivity and unhealthy eating into a lifestyle that keeps them happy, engaged and out of the doctor’s office.

We’ll report on the trainers, nutritionists, therapists and physicians whose passion it is to nurture that germ of self-care and make it bloom. Because at the end of the day, self care is really what it’s all about. “When you love something, you take good care of it all the time,” says Sarasota-based psycho-therapist Karen Koenig, who recently dipped her toe into this new movement by co-authoring a book to be published in early 2017, “Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers.”

“Lifestyle medicine is about individuals making deliberate, intentional choices,” she reports. “That’s really the biggest part of it.”

Our intention is that Lifestyle RX will inspire you to do just that.